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Infinity

Crushing Comics S01E062 – Jonathan Hickman’s Infinity + brushes with the supernatural

January 18, 2018 by krisis

I open this episode by discussing my abridged history of brushes with the supernatural, including memorable stories CK posts like the blue hair dream and the graveyard ghosts. Then, I unwrap a pair of books that were the anchor to the early part of Jonathan Hickman’s run on Avengers and New Avengers – Infinity and Infinity Companion.

Want to start from the beginning of this season of videos? Here’s the complete Season 1 playlist of Crushing Comics.

Episode 62 features Jonathan Hickman’s Infinity and the Infinity Companion hardcover. See my Guide to Marvel Events for more information.

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Collected Editions, Crushing Comics, ghosts, Infinity, Jonathan Hickman, Marvel Comics, Marvel Now, supernatural, Thanos

Song of the Day: “Look What You Made Me Do” – Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox featuring Kenton Chen

October 30, 2017 by krisis

The problem with perfection is the same one as the one with success: both are an expression of infinity.

If you are driven, you can be successful but still feel you aren’t successful enough. If you are a perfectionist, you can control every little detail but still feel you could have done more.

In each case, you’ve halved the distance between you and the infinite – there is still an infinite distance left to travel.

I think about this concept a lot, but never more than when I am considering a well-made album. Isn’t that the perfect intersection of success and perfection, plus some other nearly-infinite-to-measure quality of talent? As an artist, how do you go back into the studio when your last album is a critical and financial success, and just perfectly executed? It’s a tightrope act from which a lot of acts tumble.

Taylor Swift - Reputation

Case and point: Taylor Swift’s 1989. It’s as perfect of a pop record as I’ve heard in my life. Every single song could survive on the radio as a single. And, unusually for a golden pop LP, it actually took home the Album of the Year trophy at the Grammies – a rarity.

I don’t think there is any way to top 1989, so Taylor just … didn’t. At least, not with her lead single “Look What You Made Me Do” of off Reputation, out next week.

Swift has a habit of releasing somewhat bare, unusual lead singles, but this one is less than that. The entire songs lacks for melody before it dissolves into an embarrassing faux-hip hop retread of “I’m Too Sexy.” The overwrought lyrics, usually a Swiftian specialty, but here coming off as protesting too much. And the cinema-quality video, which mashes up a lot of disconnected elements. (Why is she a zombie at the beginning? What is with the Beyoncé rip-off dance break).

Yes, I know it currently has over 600 million streams on YouTube. That’s the kind of half-infinite success you can maintain after a long streak of near-perfection.

If there’s one good bit of the song (and the video, as it happens), it’s the string-tinged bridge with little tinkles of carousel music. It’s everything the rest of the song isn’t but wants to be – catchy, lush, and foreboding.

It’s from that point that retro arrangement wunderkind Scott Bradlee developed his band’s cover of the song. Described as a cover in the style of a James Bond theme song, it picks up the strings theme from the bridge and stretches it luxuriously across each verse to turn the previously bare vocal into a poisonous vamp.

[Read more…] about Song of the Day: “Look What You Made Me Do” – Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox featuring Kenton Chen

Filed Under: Song of the Day Tagged With: Infinity, James Bond, Kenton Chen, Perfection, Postmodern Jukebox, Taylor Swift

New Collecting Guide: Thanos, Marvel’s Mad Titan

September 13, 2016 by krisis

I’m happy to announce my first villainous comic guide – The Definitive Thanos Collecting Guide and Reading Order!

thanos-INFINITY2013004_GenThis guide isn’t only unique in focusing on a villain – it provides context for every one of Thanos’s significant comic appearances, so you can build your own ideal collection of Marvel’s Mad Titan.

Thanos made his cinematic debut in the post-credits scene in 2012’s The Avengers. From the explosion of fan fervor you’d never know that the multi-chinned purple villain had fewer than 200 in-continuity comic book appearances to his name at the time and had only once appeared in a monthly Avengers ongoing, over 35 years prior.

Originally a one-off 70s Iron Man villain, Thanos’s original notoriety came from his adoption by Jim Starlin, the creator behind the psychedelic space sagas of Captain Marvel and Adam Warlock. Thanos was the arch-nemesis of them both, but when Starlin’s initial run with Marvel wound down Thanos was shuttered along with Warlock and some of his supporting characters, revived only to usher Captain Marvel from this mortal coil in the classic Death of Captain Marvel graphic novel.

It was Starlin who again revived Thanos in the 90s during his run on Silver Surfer, this time as the only villain epic enough to assemble the entirety of Marvel’s heroes to fight him. Infinity Gauntlet was Marvel’s first linewide event with a featured mini-series plus tons of tie-ins that was centered on a singular foe. It was so successful that it spawned a pair of sequels in the following years.

After 1993, Thanos was finally unleashed on the Marvel Universe at large, but he was still used sparingly. Aside from an atypical run as a villain for Ka-Zar, Thanos stayed far away from the scrum of most of Marvel’s earthbound heroes for another 20 years! In that time he anchored another mini-series event, his own ongoing title, and was one of the main antagonists in Annihilation – the cosmic event that kicked off the line of stories that birthed Guardians of the Galaxy.

It wasn’t until Thanos’s cinematic debut that he entered the mainstream of Marvel, harassing the entire planet of heroes in Infinity while the Avengers were far afield in space. The result brought Thanos closer to the heart of Marvel’s storytelling than ever, with Jonathan Hickman using him as a central character in the run-up to Secret Wars.

Here’s the breakdown of all of Thanos’s major, most-essential appearances – each one is covered in the guide! [Read more…] about New Collecting Guide: Thanos, Marvel’s Mad Titan

Filed Under: comic books Tagged With: Infinity, Infinity Gauntlet, Thanos

Definitive Thanos Collecting Guide and Reading Order

The Thanos comic books definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Find every issue and appearance! Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated November 2018 with titles scheduled for release through July 2019.

Marvel has a handful of characters whose appetites for power and wakes of destruction single them out as a pantheon of the deadliest villains of the universe, and Thanos The Mad Titan is chief amongst them.

Modern audiences are just as likely to have met Thanos in his cheshire-grinning cameo at the end of The Avengers film as through comic books, but fans of every era of Marvel comics from his 1973 debut forward know of him – even if they’ve never read him directly. That’s because Marvel has used him judiciously over the years, keeping him largely under the pen of Jim Starlin and never making him a regular character, trivial guest-star, or easily-defeated foe. Thanos’s arrival has always been a main event.

The result is a tidy, eminently-readable back catalogue of Greatest Hits caliber stories.

thanos-INFINITY2013004_GenIt all begins in an unlikely fashion – with two anonymous, oddly-colored, muscle-bound aliens having a knock-down, drag-out fight in the middle of an unsuspecting Iron Man issue. Those aliens were Drax and Thanos. While Drax has undergone a considerable update for the modern day, Thanos remains true to that first appearance.

Soon after, he was adopted by Jim Starlin for his cosmic saga spanning Captain Marvel and Warlock, which together account for the first great Thanos story. It’s so great that it spills over to a pair of unrelated annuals for its resolution after Warlock’s title ends.

That was it for Thanos for over a decade aside from an interlude in Starlin’s landmark graphic novel, The Death of Captain Marvel.

Thanos remained out of play until Starlin took over Silver Surfer in 1990, immediately bringing his favorite obsessed-with-death villain into play. After over a year’s saga of lead-up issues, the result was one of Marvel’s most memorable events: The Infinity Gauntlet, which saw Thanos wielding the legendary weapon against the entire universe of heroes.

However, many readers of core titles like Spider-Man, Iron Man, X-Men, The Avengers never even knew Thanos was threatening the Earth! That’s because 90s mini-series events only intruded into lower-selling titles while borrowing top-selling heroes like Wolverine from their own books to boost the mini-series sales. Two more events followed in the same fashion, Infinity War and Infinity Crusade, which gradually twisted the narrative until Thanos was forced to fight alongside the heroes he so often sought to destroy.

After another relatively quiet period, Thanos returned (again, under Starlin) in Infinity Abyss and a resulting ongoing series, his first. Then, Thanos is thrust onto center stage at the start of Marvel’s blockbuster 2000s cosmic saga, Annihilation, and he reappears to terminate it with The Thanos Imperative.

Finally, concurrent with the release of The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy films, Brian Bendis and Jonathan Hickman formalize Thanos as a villain who can square off agains the assembled might of the Avengers. For many Marvel readers who hadn’t read the Infinity or Annihilation sagas, it was their first exposure to Thanos.

It won’t be their last exposure, as Marvel seems to have plans to keep Thanos visible in their books straight through to his featured role in Avengers: Infinity War in 2018. He has starred in digital series, one-shots, original graphic novels, and his second ongoing launched in late 2016.
[Read more…] about Definitive Thanos Collecting Guide and Reading Order

Comic Book Review: Marvel’s Infinity #2

September 5, 2013 by krisis

Jonathan Hickman and the Avenger’s writing and editorial team are turning linewide crossovers into highly choreographed dance before our very eyes.

From the relatively staid Infinity #1 sprang Hickman’s own Avengers #18 and New Avengers #9 – one a space battle that forged unlikely allies, the other a civil war between Earth’s remaining mighty heroes. From Avengers #18 spun Kellie Sue DeConnick’s two-sided coin of Avengers Assemble #18 and Captain Marvel #15, following two Avengers Quinjets into and out of the battle through the eyes of two best friends separated by the gulf of space.

They were four highly enjoyable comic books. The coordination between Avengers, Assemble, and Captain Marvel was nothing less than extraordinary – each one mirrors scenes from the other to construct a prismatic view of the same battle.

That brings us to the second entry in the main event – Infinity #2. Would it play out yet another dimension of the same space battle? Would it breathe some life into the characters from the prior issue? Would the teenage angst of the art improve?

Let’s find out.

Infinity 0002Infinity #2 of 6  

Script and graphic design by Jonathan Hickman. Art by Jerome Opena & Dustin Weaver. Color art by Justin Ponsor.

Rating: 3 of 5 – Good

#140char review: Infinity #2: The plot picks up as a still impersonal story snaps between Earth & space but it’s Opena’s portion of art that makes this epic.

CK Says: Consider it.

Infinity #2 is a thriller from its opening pages, and writer Jonathan Hickman can’t even take all the credit.

Marvel-Infinity-0002-interior01

Marvel needs to back up a Brinks truck to the front door of Eisner-winning artist Jerome Opena to ensure his participation on big event books for many years to come. Surely his highly-detailed, cinematic art takes a steady hand and long hours to produce, but every damn frame of it in this comic book is utterly gorgeous – especially wall-worthy recaps of the battles shown in New Avengers. Justin Ponsor’s colors ground Opena’s lined work, adding to its depth and texture.

I suspect this is the sort of comic art movie-goers are hoping to find when they crack open an issue or buy it digitally. Marvel can’t afford to have this sort of weary realism grace the pages of every book – nor would that be appropriate. But it’s a welcome delight after events handled by the slick, animated style of Coipel and Immonen. When it comes to The Avengers and massive events, readers deserve the best of that style – and right now Opena is its pinnacle at Marvel (along with veteran Mike Deodato on Hickman’s Avengers books).

Not all of the book is Opena – after a low-orbit prologue, he sticks to the space battles, leaving two scenes of Earth-bound action to compatriot Dustin Weaver. Weaver, whose notable slowness has marooned a second series of Hickman’s SHIELD two-thirds of the way through, is in solid form in his two segments if not a match for Opena.

As with Cheung before him, he draws terrific architecture and monstrous aliens. However, he also nails all of the human figure-work and faces – at least, for the men he does. He can’t seemed to decide how to draw Inhuman queen Medusa from panel to panel.

(And, let’s face it – his marquee panel of a determined Black Bolt looks like Grumpy Cat.)

Overall, the art is just a mugging Inhumans away from five-stars, but how does the story fare?

Marvel-Infinity-0002-interior02

Hickman is in finer form here than in the first chapter, deftly playing between the scenes of the four tie-in issues that intervened. A brief prologue showing an armed infiltration of a S.W.O.R.D. satellite base is isn’t strictly necessary, but wisely frames the action on Earth that we saw in New Avengers #9 to draw it into the context of this story. Opena’s panel’s of Sydren are perhaps the best he’s ever looked (and I think I own his every appearance so far). Similarly, Hickman and Opena dispatch of the three-issue space battle in a single page that expertly weaves in the action we’ve missed.

Scenes in the Inhumans’ floating city shows why Thanos’s interest have suddenly turned to Earth while The Builders’ obliterate societies across the galaxy, while in the intervening pages we see The Builders’ plot of destruction is not as one-sided as we thought.

In getting there, we view a series of thrilling still-frames from a kinetic space battle that casts our Avengers (and Claremont-created Gladiator of the Shi’ar) as a new pantheon of powerful gods to replace our creators of old. What use does an adult society have with its progenitors? Once we are given life, how long must we show gratitude and deference before striking our own path? The Builders seem to be contemplating these same questions, as they send a sole Ex Nihilo (meaning “out of nothing” – a concept intrinsically linked with creation) on a mission that runs counter to his life’s purpose.

This is the Hickman I know and love – interlacing questions of determinism and theology amidst his punch-ups.

Marvel-Infinity-0002-interior03

Yet, even as Hickman hits his narrative stride, he shows that he’s still adjusting to story-telling on comics biggest stage. Both the space battle and the wake of the Nihilo’s action are narrated by a removed speaker, keeping the reader at a distance from the heroes we so desire to get close to. In particular, their humanitarian mission to the victims of the Ex Nihilo comes off as a maudlin waste of pages despite Opena in full gravitas mode. Just a word from Thor’s lips to pair with his actions could have loaned these scenes the narrative heft to match their imagery, but Hickman misses the chance.

A final Earth-bound sequence by Weaver is all exposition to get us to the issue’s big reveal. It’s a doozy in terms of Marvel continuity, but it would have been heavier if we could expect a Secret Invasion style “Who could it be?” surprise in the coming issues. Unfortunately, the mystery doesn’t have a very deep bench of characters to draw its answer from. It would have probably been more interesting to make the subject a mutant than an Inhuman, which would have also made the X-Men more relevant to the event. Alas, Marvel has other intellectual property to flog in 2014, and Hickman dutifully steers the story in that direction.

We end Infinity #2 in a far more interesting place than we began, questioning the motives of a pair of seemingly-unconnected but equally-complex enemies. It’s clear this crossover isn’t going to be the two-front bash-em-up its lead-up suggested. Yet, one-third of the way through the event, it’s a fair question to ask if Hickman will ever make these stunning images and surprising developments truly visceral. For all the barbs thrown at past event-pilots Bendis and Fraction, they each knew how to give voice to fan favorite characters and twist a personal knife amidst the destruction of battle.

Though the story of Infinity has now proven its intrigue, I fear Hickman might stay removed from the action for the duration of this series. Maybe that’s how it should be … maybe that’s how we avoid a disappointing event. Even so, it’s also going to leave each issue slightly unsatisfying as we finish it.

Filed Under: comic books, reviews Tagged With: Avengers, Brian Bendis, Dustin Weaver, Ex Nihilo, Gladiator, Infinity, Inhumans, Jerome Opena, Jonathan Hickman, Justin Posnor, Kelly Sue Deconnick, Marvel Comics, Matt Fraction

Comic Book Review: Marvel’s Infinity #1

August 20, 2013 by krisis

Monthly comic books are a bit like the local nightly news.

Whether a day is exciting or not, or whether you care or not, your local nightly news will find something to say about it. I haven’t seen it for over a decade, but some people watch it daily. Others just tune in when there is a big story to report on.

Ongoing comic books are a lot like that. They just keep happening, issue after issue, while comic book publishers find new things about them to hype every month. Some people devoutly collect each one, while others only buy stories with their favorite characters or creators.

Both in news and in comics, every once in a while there is a big event. A big news event is the kind of thing that causes TV networks to break into their regularly scheduled programming with an update from the national news bureau, and might keep you refreshing Twitter or CNN all day long.

Comic books have the equivalent in line-wide event books. These limited-run titles signal the arrival of a massive, world-altering story too big in scope to contain in a single 22-page issue. However, much like big news events, sometimes comic events are a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, and after all the breathless coverage you wonder what the big deal was.

Which brings us to today’s topic…

Infinity - 0001Infinity #1 of 6  

Script and graphic design by Jonathan Hickman. Pencils by Jim Cheung. Inks by Mark Morales with John Livesay, David Meikis, and Jim Cheung. Color art by Justin Ponsor.

Rating: 2.5 of 5 – Okay

#140char review: Infinity #1: Hickman reveals a long-term plot in steady pulses. As usual, Cheung’s heroes are all thin-lipped teens. Solid (if bland) set-up

CK Says: Consider it.

Jonathan Hickman excels at writing entire forests of plot and motivations, and in the end Infinity #1 is just a single tree.

Marvel - Infinity - 0001 - interior01

You can tell that important plot points are being set up here. You can feel that certain foreboding exposition is actually the punch line of a dark joke we won’t be told for several issues.

Yet, on its own Infinity #1 just doesn’t excite.

Part of this is a heavy reliance on alien concepts (literally and figuratively). While the Giger-eseque alien Outrider and an entire subjugated society of Ahl-Gullo are made from whole cloth, bringing Space Knights back from the brink of obscurity is a delight. However, the resultingly spare speaking panels full of heroes leaves this thick book feeling a bit light on content.

Of those, only Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Bolt get significant screen time here, and none of them are actually significant. The former two feel as though they appear just to appease whiners like me, though Black Bolt certainly makes his presence felt (and heard).

Jim Cheung is drawing both the bookends of this series, and those positions are likely the wisest choice. Cheung excels at creatures, cityscapes, gear, and explosions – all guaranteed in the opening and closing installments. His widescreen alien action will make you realize why comic book movies will never top the sheer audacity of settings and casting of actual comics.

Marvel - Infinity - 0001 - interior02

That said, films do have one up on Cheung: he’s merely average on faces. His heroes are no Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson, handsome and distinct. Every last human being has the same thin-lipped, constipated teenager face – Cap’s just has a few extra wrinles. It made Cheung unmissable on Young Avengers and Children’s Crusade, but annoying here. His action is unclear, making the nimble escape of the Outrider a confusing muddle.

The real art-star of this book is colorist Justin Ponsor, who finds middle ground between Dean White reversed-white shading and Marvel’s infamously orange sunset color scheme. From the haunting red of the sunken eye-sockets of a tortured Caretaker to the dusty rainbow of superhero costumes pressed together in a chilly cargo hold, Ponsor finds the right tone for every page. It’s he who knocks it out of the park for the best splash pages of the book – the visceral vibration effect on Black Bolt’s seismic whisper and two full pages of Thanos’s shadowed face.

The lack of thrill in issue one isn’t a mood-killer. Hickman has yet to pen a disappointing arc of comics. The next two artists – Opena and Weaver – are two of the best in Marvel’s stable. And, in addition to five additional issues of Infinity, we’re also due for nine key Avengers issues to expand the plot – so, it’s likely Avengers #18 and New Avengers #9 will fill in the character beats I sorely missed in this issue. Plus, once we’ve traversed the entire forest, this particular tree will probably look much more interesting.

This isn’t a bad comic book, but you probably won’t go wrong simply picking up #2 when it hits in a few weeks.

PS: If you can, pick this book up digitally for a rather impressive Silver Surfer back-up story that isn’t present in the print edition.

Filed Under: comic books, reviews Tagged With: Event Comics, Events, Infinity, Jim Cheung, Jonathan Hickman, Justin Ponsor, Marvel Comics, Nightly News, Thanos

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